Or nearly all. Spider-Man: Homecoming and Far From Home aren't on Disney Plus, and neither is the Hulk movie with Edward Norton - possibly because they're worried about confusing people with discontinuity?
At any rate I've gotten through Phase 1, and am now 1.5 movies into Phase 2. I've seen most of the movies but never got around to the Thor ones (other than Ragnarok), and I can't say I was missing much. But it's interesting to see them again, given that I've never sat down to rewatch any of the movies in their entirety.
It's especially appropriate given that a couple of weeks ago I was talking about my memories of movies, music and video games I loved as a kid. Watching the first Iron Man movie again reminded me of the weekend that I walked to the cinema from my mom's place in London, where I was living at the time because I was between flats. Not having anything else on that afternoon I went to see it on my own, at the Vue Cinema where I would later see Black Panther (which is another fun story).
Since it was 12 years ago, I can't quite keep straight whether I'd already seen The Dark Knight (always at the same theatre), and whether I'd seen Dark Knight with anyone. But I do know I saw Iron Man on my own, and enjoyed it immensely, both because of the things I recalled from the comics and the fun, silly and loud goings-on onscreen.
I'm also far enough away from those days that it surprises me a little to hear that Iron Man was considered a third-tier character at the time, and that giving him an entire movie of his own was seen as quite risky. I was never that big a fan, but I knew a fair amount of back story, so it was exciting to see it all playing out in live action (if updated for modern sensibilities, i.e. not dripping with racism).
The other thing I remember is the rush of SQUEEEEE that hit when I saw the (now-famous) post-credits scene where Samuel L Jackson, as Nick Fury, tells Tony Stark about the "Avenger Initiative". Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch's reboot series, Ultimates, was still pretty fresh in my mind, and seeing them aim for that in the movies was exciting as hell.
Thinking about it all now, I still appreciate the sense of excitement and possibility from watching Tony Stark go from entitled playboy to hero. It's also interesting to see how much was referenced in Infinity War and Endgame, and how many ideas that were introduced here culminated in those movies.
On the negative side, you also see the formula early on. The origin story, which takes up the entire first act, the confusing fight scenes and the fairly limited color palette (at least at first). Add to that the fact that, excitement of seeing Iron Man on the big screen aside, the movies were full of cliche - literally the first scene in Iron Man 2 is Mickey Rourke's character watching his father die, and then screaming to the heavens - a sort of Russian-language "NOOOOOOOOO" that filled me with little hope for the rest of the movie.
What's odd is that I liked Iron Man 2 a bit better on the second viewing, that scene aside. Robert Downey Jr is as engaging as ever, and again, you see a lot of things introduced here that play out later.
Another one that's hard to separate from what came later is Captain America: The First Avenger. The last scene especially, where he's talking to Agent Carter as he aims the Red Skull's doomsday plane toward the Arctic ice, hits hard when you think of his years in the present and then his return to the 40s at the end of Endgame.
The question that keeps echoing through my mind as I write this, though, is whether any of that is more than fan service. I don't want to be a spoilsport, but I guess as a writer I can't help it? In any case, like so many comic book movies before and since, it's hard to separate my actual feelings about the quality of the Marvel Cinematic Universe from my excitement at seeing throw-away references to an obscure character I read back in the 90s, or even the pleasures of seeing Jack Kirby's art form the design aesthetic of a bunch of these films.
Both of those aspects are nice, but they don't necessarily make the movies great in themselves, and I have to say that the middle of Phase 2 dragged for me a bit. Avengers: Age of Ultron, as I've noted before, was a frustrating watch because the filmmakers were too concerned with playing up the "universe" aspects than with telling the story as it needed to be told (when I say filmmakers here, I mean the producers who forced Joss Whedon and the screenwriters to put in that crazy scene with Thor in that cave, which made no sense at the time).
What I'm hoping, though, is that in rewatching all of these movies I can see the ones I didn't like (Age of Ultron, Guardians of the Galaxy) with fresher eyes and with better understanding of the picture the filmmakers were trying to draw with all those callbacks, call forwards and digressions.
This might even extend to Thor: The Dark World, which was up until today the only MCU movie I'd never seen even a minute of. Wish me luck, though, because it's the one that everyone seems to hate above all others...
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